Ministry of Education organises workshop for inspectors

The Ministry of Education on Tuesday organised an orientation workshop for school inspectors of the National Inspectorate Board (NIB) under the Ministry of Education to improve educational performance at the pre-tertiary level.

The objective of the workshop was to provide a diagnosis of what a school must do in order to improve upon its academic performance by setting and enforcing standards that must be observed by all pre-tertiary public and private schools.

Dr. George Afeti, Chief Inspector of Schools of the Ministry of Education, explained that the pre-tertiary school means all basic education schools like kindergartens, the first and second cycle institutions including technical and vocational training institutes both public and private.

He said the Ministry had recruited 300 team inspectors across the country and 20 lead inspectors to be introduced to the school inspection guidelines and the code of conduct for inspectors that had been developed by the NIB.

Dr. Afeti said report at the Ghana Statistical Service revealed that of the 11.4 million people who constituted the workforce in 2010, 35.3 per cent never had any formal education; 28.6 per cent had, and 10 per cent had secondary or higher education.

He said due to these challenges, Parliament enacted a new Education Act in 2008 to improve education delivery in the country and make it more responsive to national development goals and priorities.

Dr. Afeti said the Act established three autonomous agencies including the National Teaching Council, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment and the National Inspectorate Board under the Ministry of Education to support quality education delivery in the country.

Mrs Cynthia Bosumtwi-Sam, Deputy Chief Inspector of Schools for the Ghana Education Service, said the team inspectors would be expected to have some quality indicators to evaluate the performance of schools.

She said the indicators of quality to be emphasized by the NIB in its work relates to the quality of the teacher, what goes on in the classroom, the quality of graduates, quality of laboratory and the overall learning culture and quality of the school environment.